A Meal Abroad

by Jeanie Ngo

Dark brown and wide, my father's eyes
swept the cramped corners of the
restaurant,

now prone to a hail of memories:
the scope of an M16
weighted in the arms of a teenage
boy; the ground floating in the clouds;
wild cây tre ablaze, coal and bronze
opaque smoke clouding;
bandages unwound;
a notch to make bark sing of death.

An approaching waiter could not perceive that his table
was miles and decades away and

 the Special was a bead of
panic, a flush in mirrored
cheekbones,
two joint lives with meager overlap.

Cà phê sữa đá splashed over the glass’s rim
and did not melt into the orange tablecloth, deciding to roam,
plotting like generals, and chairmen,
striving to reach
a zenith of gloss and
glory.

(War could not darken their lives
if their checkbooks were printed to
align with a headlong stroke of a
fountain pen.)

The poor waiter did not know what his accent could do,
how it propped up a spine
in a jungle trench,

dry lips praying and
damning, a shout or sigh
away
from being a point in a history exam.

The food was unmemorable.

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Jeanie Ngo is a San Francisco writer whose plays have been produced in QAF VI and VII at Bindlestiff Studio, the Shotgun Festival and Spring Fringe Festival at SFSU, SF Olympians Festivals VII, VIII, and X at Exit Theatre, and Pint Sized, Music/Scene, Mixtape, and ShortLived VII at PianoFight. She has also written “MÓN QUÀ YÊU THƯƠNG,” an Asia Entertainment Christmas special. Her short stories have been published in the literary magazines Transfer 109 and Quiet Lightning, and her poetry has been featured at the Abrams Claghorn Gallery and published in the Scottish broadside "barbara". Instagram: @jeaniewritenow